Machination
by Grav
Summary: Helen threads kisses down his body, weaving in and out of the plastic tubing and around the metal protuberances as if they've always been a part of him.


**AN**:I keep hoping to break into the top half of the alphabet with these titles. At least I'm getting closer! Written for the prompt "Helen/James, necessary".

**Disclaimer**: Not mine, not mine, etc.

**Spoilers**: None

**Characters/Pairing**: Helen Magnus/James Watson

**Rating**: M

**Summary**: Helen threads kisses down his body, weaving in and out of the plastic tubing and around the metal protuberances as if they've always been a part of him.

* * *

**Machination**

Helen threads kisses down his body, weaving in and out of the plastic tubing and around the metal protuberances as if they've always been a part of him. He feels like she is kissing someone else, some_thing_ else. It's like the machine they designed to save his life has in face stolen it, and is returning it to him in paltry amounts, doled out on a careful schedule guaranteed to make his life as long and as lonely as possible.

He is not afraid of death, not exactly, but Helen made it quite clear that she is not prepared to accept him getting old and leaving her without a fight, and at the time, the machine had seemed like a good idea. But now that he's woken up to its clockwork horror, monitoring his heart and his lungs and every single fluid he produces (and some the machine produces for him), he's a little bit appalled.

Helen's tongue traces each ring that secures the tubes along his arms and fingers, and he wonders if she's tasting skin or metal or some ungodly hybrid. The hair on his knuckles responds, tickling awareness up to his elbow, and he decides that has got to be a good sign. He's trying to breathe normally, but then realizes that the machine is _making_ him breathe normally, and he wonders if everything he does will be so precisely accounted for from this point on.

He is going to punch Nikola the next time he suggests that James's penchant for organization leans to the side of obsessive.

Helen's hands have got ahead of her mouth, which surprises him for some silly reason, and so his brain is not quite finished figuring out how to process the kisses on his chest when it is assaulted by the sensations caused by her fingers wrapped around his length.

James expels a breath that's nearly explosive in relief, and lets his head fall backwards into the pillows. It feels the same.

"I told you," Helen breathes, and James tries to voice his agreement but fails completely to actually form the words. She smiles against the skin of his stomach, and trails kisses along his hip while her hands work him until he's hard in her grasp.

He wants very badly to roll her over and lay her out, as she's done to him, and to make her feel that same sense of reality, but he's not entirely sure he can bend that way anymore, and he'd rather die than break the moment, so he lets her take him into her mouth without adding any of his own. Instead, he forces himself to hold his head up so that he can watch her.

He twists his fingers into her hair, not hard, and revels in the fact that he can feel a hundred distinct strands at the same time. He can even feel the cold metal of the rings scrape against his flesh where they get caught in her hair and pull. His pulse sounds loudly in his ears as she sucks him, and there is nothing mechanical about it, save a slight pressure against his chest that might be his own anticipation anyway.

His hands tighten in a warning he can't voice, but she ignores him and swallows when he comes. He feels boneless, wonders if the machine understands repletion beyond the sense of an expended power source, and his head falls back into the pillows once more. This time, Helen follows him up, arranging her body around his so that they can sleep as any two lovers might, despite their somewhat unorthodox arrangement.

She sleeps first, underneath the soft covers that mask the metal contraption he has made himself into, because he cannot stop listening to the sound of the machine whirring about to accompany his breaths. The sound of her breathing, the feel of her rise and fall, gradually takes over, and he finds that he can force his own breathing to match hers, machine be damned.

By the time James Watson falls asleep, he feels entirely human.

* * *

**fin**

Gravity_Not_Included, January 27, 2011


End file.
